


Even If She Flees Soon She Shall Pursue

by ambiguously



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-01-26 10:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12555696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Lyra and Jyn take refuge in the Gerrera Rebel cell.





	Even If She Flees Soon She Shall Pursue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NeurotropicAgentX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeurotropicAgentX/gifts).



The hideaway is dark, cold, and unwelcoming. Lyra and Galen built this refuge as a last defense against the horrible potential of what could come. The Empire has found them, and as much as she loves her husband, she loves their daughter more. Lyra holds Jyn as they shiver through the sleepless days, listening to the deathtroopers search the caverns and crannies, scanning for their trail. Every crunch of gravel sends a jolt to her heart. Every barked order, untranslatable, speaks of their doom. Even silence is no friend, whispering of traps laid in wait for the prey to emerge.

Jyn weeps without sound, too afraid to be heard. If they stay here in the darkness, even with the iron rations, even with the stored water, they will die of heartbreak.

At last, Lyra risks opening the hatch, letting in the first fresh air instead of their own stale breath. Outside, she spies movement, and she hurriedly shuts them away again, but she can hear boots running their way. She readies her weapon, and tells Jyn to hide at the far end of the hole.

The hatch opens. Steela Gerrera peers in, a blaster in her own hand. "Lyra?"

She drops her weapon. "You came."

"Of course. Come. We haven't much time."

Lyra blinks in the light. "The house."

"Gone. Bring what you have with you now." Which is nothing. Lyra helps Jyn climb out of the dark hole.

* * *

Steela runs a Rebel cell, fighting the Empire with deadly efficiency. Lyra is free to take her daughter and go, and spend the rest of their lives on the run, fearful of being shot, or worse, being taken in alive. She is free to stay here and fight the bastards who took her husband away, giving up her autonomy for the sake of a greater good only Steela Gerrera can see. Lyra is living under a death sentence either way. She chooses the sentence that gives her a chance to strike back, a chance to make the galaxy free for other families, other children. She listens to the speeches Steela gives to her soldiers, and she lets herself believe in them.

Steela has changed since they last met. They've spoken, they've written, but now there's gray in her hair to match her name, and she's harder, too. Her brother fell in an Imperial raid two years ago when he went against her orders.

"He'd be alive now if he'd listened," she says, and little else. The depth of her grief has been twisted into a deeper anger against their faceless, implacable, mutual enemy. Lyra puts Krennic's face to her own pain, but she grants that killing him won't change anything about her own life, nor will it buy Jyn's safety. The only way out is for the Empire to fall. On that, they are perfectly agreed.

* * *

Her friend claims she learned her tactics from Jedi back during the war, back when there was still hope for Onderon. Planting mines doesn't seem like Jedi work. Lyra becomes an expert at wiring their explosives, because anyone who does not soon become an expert becomes dead. She won't let Jyn touch the bombs.

Steela says, "Her fingers are small. They'll be able to reach the wiring more easily."

"I want her to keep her fingers. Go play," she says, scooting her child away. To Steela alone, she says, "Any work you need from her, I'll do in her place. She isn't involved with this. She's a civilian."

"None of us are civilians, Lyra. This is a war, and non-combatants die as quickly as those who carry a gun."

Lyra continues her work. Jyn would be good at thieving. She would be good at dancing into tight spaces and setting the explosive charges where stormtroopers would not see them until it's too late. She would be a perfect, sweet-faced killer. Or she would be killed.

"Teach her to shoot, then."

Steela works with Jyn herself, helping her learn the feel and heft and kick of each blaster type their cell owns. She shows her how to aim, and how to wait, and when to choose not to take the shot. Jyn is far too fast a learner. Lyra hugs her after each lesson, trying to squeeze her back into the little girl she can't be any longer.

* * *

Three years into their new lives, Lyra wakes up one chilly morning and accepts that Galen is dead. If the Empire has not killed him, the man she loved is surely burnt to a crisp inside the shell of the body toting around his genius brain. She will not find him, rescue him, have him back. Galen is lost, and she is as widowed as if she shot him herself.

Another month passes before she lets herself seek comfort in Steela's bed. The offer has been open to her without restrictions or implied requirement. They did this before, long ago, girls with brighter futures ahead of them even if Lyra already saw the hard line of Steela's beliefs drawing itself between them.

Back then, things were simple and intense and fleeting. Now that they are older, things are more bitter yet more tender. Contrasts are everything.

Steela is open and vulnerable here when they are alone, and the hair curling between Lyra's exploring fingertips is still as dark as space. This woman smells of the same sweat they all do, but she tastes of sweet and sea, tumultuous in her passion as Lyra drinks her down. She laughs when she comes, the same joyful peal Lyra remembers from too long ago.

The fingers Lyra draws into her mouth one by one shot a man two days ago for informing on them to the Empire. The lips she kisses gave the order to wipe out a cadre of stormtroopers they found unwatchful. The hand between her legs, working itself inside her as Lyra winces and cries in a pleasure so close to pain she can't tell the difference, throttled a man to death while Lyra's daughter watched, for the crime of threatening the child. Steela is power, and she burns with her own pain, and Lyra can bend to her, or she can die.

She chooses to live. She always chooses to live.


End file.
